


Shiro and Allura both can't sleep

by mckinlily



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro and Allura only pretend to be competent adults, THERE NEEDS TO BE MORE FUN IN THIS SHIP!, let Shiro have fun 2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 13:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13077846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mckinlily/pseuds/mckinlily
Summary: It is a generally held assumption that Shiro and Allura, both being unable to sleep, met up in the quiet of the night, and over the course pouring out their hearts to each other, fell in love. And while it is true neither Shiro nor Allura is very good at sleeping and they have met up at god-forsaken hours in the Castle, the heart-wrenching conversations are more a fiction than reality. This is due to the fact that—despite all attempts to appear otherwise—Shiro and Allura are actually both very young adults and just as susceptible terrible 2am ideas as anyone.They do fall in love though. But it goes like this:OR How Shiro and Allura got a lifetime ban from Hunk's kitchen and other fun stories.





	Shiro and Allura both can't sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: there is a brief description of a panic attack. It's short and not very detailed, but if that's a problem for you, you might want to skip the section starting with "Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and they meant to kill their nightmares by playing another round of anti-gravity tag."
> 
> Other than that, enjoy! Because, seriously, Shiro and Allura need to have some fun.

It is a generally held assumption that Shiro and Allura, both being unable to sleep, met up in the quiet of the night, and over the course pouring out their hearts to each other, fell in love. And while it _is_ true neither Shiro nor Allura is very good at sleeping and they _have_ met up at god-forsaken hours in the Castle, the heart-wrenching conversations are more a fiction than reality. This is due to the fact that—despite all attempts to appear otherwise—Shiro and Allura are actually both very young adults and just as susceptible terrible 2am ideas as anyone.

They do fall in love though.

But it goes like this:

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and they bump into each other on the bridge. Allura is scrolling through star systems, long past the point where she’s actually working, instead spinning the maps so fast the stars smear together into fuzzy streaks of light to her sleep-deprived eyes. Shiro stumbles in looking something like hell warmed over. He grips the side of the door and blinks blearily at her.

“Princess? What are you doing up?”

“I was just…” Allura waves at the stars that are dipping in strange, nonsensical patterns. “This.”

Shiro nods like that makes sense.

At this point Allura realizes that Shiro’s hair is sticking up in every direction, his face is covered in a sheen of sweat, and his eyes can’t seem to focus on anything. “Shiro,” she asks in concern. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” says Shiro. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you. Just…looking for fresh air, I guess.”

And this is where the miscommunication happens because they end up in the decontamination room, and Shiro lets out an umanly yelp when he’s blasted with the pressurized air.

“What is this?” he yells over the roar.

“Fresh air!” Allura shouts back.

Shiro stares at her. For a long minute, it looks like it’s about to get awkward. But then he laughs. Wild, loose, out of control—there are even tear tracks down his cheeks though that could be the wind. The laughter is catching. Allura doubles over too and then shrieks when she loses her footing and gets blown against the wall. Shiro tries to help, really he does, but he’s too busy laughing to do much besides get knocked over himself. And then the wash cycle begins, and they’re both doused in soap and water before Allura managed to turn it off. Only to get blasted by the air cycle again.

They end up against the far wall, soaked and windswept and laughing uncontrollably together.

“Did that—aha!” Allura struggles to control her giggles. “Ha—Did that help?”

Shiro grins at her, sloppy and loose, with light brimming in his eyes. “Actually, yes. Great idea, Princess.”

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep and both happen to get the midnight munchies. They stumble into the kitchen, mumbling greetings to each other and plodding along in search of their favored snacks.

At some point, the food goo lights on fire. They mutually agree not to mention this fact to the others.

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep. At least—not in their beds. Allura finds Shiro sleeping upright in a corner. She stops and stares at him, uncertain. Is this something that humans frequently do? A loud snore breaks her thoughts. Allura yelps, and Shiro wakes up. He fumbles adorably in his confusion. They decide to make their way to their own rooms.

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep. Shiro isn’t aware of this fact until Allura catches him pacing the observation deck. “Let’s do something fun,” she says.

Shiro raises his eyebrows. “You have something in mind?”

Turns out, she doesn’t, but Shiro remembers something Lance had mentioned in passing that day and grins.

The Castle’s sleek halls makes sock slides _fantastic._

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep and they’re hungry, so they decide to try throwing together one of Hunk’s recipes because “it can’t be that hard, can it?”

“We’re not mentioning this to the team, right?” says Shiro as he scrapes blackened, shriveled lumps into the waste unit.

“No, of course not,” said Allura. “We’re capable adults.”

“We’re responsible,” agrees Shiro.

“We should absolutely be able to feed ourselves.”

Shiro snorts so loud it wakes up Platt who had been dozing on Allura’s shoulder. Allura snickers.

“At least there’s food goo?”

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and neither can Pidge. Or so Pidge says. But she doesn’t even last twenty minutes into the movie they’re playing on her laptop, so Shiro and Allura make a game of stacking the blue puffs of popcorn-like snacks on her nose, cheeks, ears, eyebrows…

They have a truly impressive tower going before Pidge sneezes and wakes herself up. She stares around at the mess in confusion.

They blame the mice.

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and there’re red and orange… _things_ … all over the kitchen. Shiro stares at the overflowing pot as if it personally betrayed him.

“But—How—? Allura, stop laughing at me!”

 

For once Shiro can sleep, but he gets woken up by a quick pounding on his door. He’s up and answering before he’s even quite aware of where he is.

“Shiro, I need your help—Oh no, were you actually asleep?”

It’s a bad sign that she assumed he wasn’t. Probably. That sounds like a Black Paladin thing to think. Mostly he’s distracted by the dark sauce-like substance that is splattered over most of Allura’s front.

“Is that—?” He’s severely sleep deprived which is the only reasoning he can put behind stinking his finger into a glop on her shoulder and licking it. He blinks. “Were you trying to make a milkshake?”

Allura pouts. “I don’t see what I’m doing wrong.”

And, well, Shiro’s not going to be any help, but he’s not going to be able to sleep now either, so he follows her back to the kitchen.

 

Shiro and Allura both don’t want to sleep. The last battle all but shattered the Castle’s particle barrier, and Keith barely made it to the healing pod in time. They’re in deep space now, hiding. They should be safe until the Castle and Keith are healed, but neither Shiro nor Allura is really okay. So they sit in the infirmary, with Keith motionless behind them, and they talk. Shiro talks about the animated shows he watched as a kid and the way he and his childhood friends would pretend to be magical ninja warriors racing around the apartment complex. Allura explains her own very perilous adventures as a Great Jumping Gretchenliknler. Neither of them really makes much sense to the other, but that isn’t the point.

The point is that by morning, Shiro’s shoulders aren’t so tight he can hardly hold them straight anymore. In the morning, Allura’s nails aren’t bitten to a quick. That’s what matters.

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and Shiro has been telling Allura about the anti-gravity training in preparation of the Kerberos mission. He’s only been talking a few minutes when Allura’s eyes light up, and she’s dragging him off the training room.

"Show me,” she says, and she turns off the gravity.

What starts as a simple demonstration turns into an all out war complete with the invisible maze, grappling hooks, the Altean equivalent of nerf balls, and a severe misuse of jetpacks.

“You know,” says Shiro, twisting in one of those insane gymnastics-like moves to avoid the maze wall. “I should make this part of our next training.”

Allura nails him with an Altean nerf ball, laughing. “You have to get better first.”

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and they are going to _conquer_ this kitchen.

Hunk sends them both very disappointed looks in the morning.

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, so they decide to trade ghost stories. But being from different planets and entirely different cultures means there’s a definitive lack of context and most the stories just sound ridiculous. They end up laughing so hard that Lance stomps out, facemask on and Pidge’s headphones around his neck, his hands on his hips like an over-worked mother.

“Do you guys even _try_ to sleep?”

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep. Shiro and Allura get chased out of the kitchen by a patient but slightly frantic looking Hunk.

 

Shiro can’t sleep, and he finds himself in front of Allura’s door with his hand raised before he even questions what he’s doing. That she might not be awake. That isn’t not his place to intrude.

She opens the door anyway. She’s in her sleep clothes, hair loose and wild down her back, eyes squinting as she struggles to keep them open. She doesn’t say anything, just drags Shiro to the observation deck where they watch the stars until she nods off against his shoulder.

 

Shiro and Allura aren’t even trying to sleep. Somehow, Allura has talked Shiro into telling the history of his less than successful dating life, and she won’t stop laughing. His face is hot, and he feels warm in ways that should be uncomfortable but it’s… not. Allura’s happy. And Shiro—

Shiro is, too.

 

Shiro and Allura aren’t sleeping, they’re pouring over miles and miles of transmissions, trying to figure out how the Galra knew they were at their last location. Finally, Shiro looks back at Allura and the upset pinch between her eyebrows.

“Hey. Let’s try something else.”

 

Shiro and Allura both won’t be able to sleep but they’re going to tear themselves to pieces if they keep working, so Shiro pulls out Lance’s cell phone offers to teach Allura dances from Earth.

As it turns out, Shiro has only ever learned how to dance in order to pull moves at clubs and apparently Altean dancing is all about extremely intricate hip movements, so together they cook up something truly dangerous, bending and twisting until they feel like their limbs are made of rubber and their smiles hurt their faces.

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep…at night. The paladins find them slumped over in the rec room mid-afternoon. Shiro’s completely conked out, head fallen back and snoring. Allura’s hair is in his mouth, not that he’s anywhere close to noticing. Allura herself has taken something of the starfish approach, sprawled across the couch and Shiro.

"Uh, what do we do?” says Lance.

“We could try moving them to a bed?” suggests Pidge doubtfully.

“Nah, I’m not sure any of us could carry them,” says Hunk. “Besides, Shiro’s a really light sleeper. He’d probably wake up. And you know he wouldn’t go back to sleep.”

“So we let them sleep,” says Lance. He shakes his head. “Man, but that angle of Shiro’s neck looks painful.”

“ _Keith!_ ” hisses Pidge suddenly.

Keith just makes a frantic “Be quiet!” gesture at her as he slips closer to the sleeping duo. Carefully, with a practiced ease that is actually be a bit worrying, he extracts the data pads from their loose fingers.

“C’mon,” he says, handing one to Lance and keeping one for himself. “Let’s look these over. They’re going to be stressed if it doesn’t get done because they were asleep.”

No one mentions that their leaders are going to be stressed no matter what. They head out, Lance glancing over his shoulder.

“Do you think they’d wake up if we gave them blankets?”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Keith.

They keep arguing, but neither of their voices rises above a loud whisper.

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and now neither can anyone else as the Castle alarms start blaring.

Keith barrels down a smoke-filled hallway. “SHIRO!”

“I’m fine,” Shiro coughs. He stumbles into sight with Allura.

Allura’s also coughing, and she keeps shooting dirty looks back where they came from. “I don’t get it,” she says. “Our theory was sound.”

Keith grabs onto Shiro. “Are you okay? What happened? Were we attacked? Who hurt you?”

“Hey guys, where’s the fire?” Lance has his bayard, but he also has a space cucumber over one eye. It’s anyone’s guess how it’s staying on.

“ATTAAAACCCKKKK!” cries Coran. Pidge follows him at a much slower pace with a frankly dangerous-looking bit of unfinished tech in her hand and a look of pure murder on her face.

Hunk, however, is looking down the particular hallway Shiro and Allura came out of, his eyebrows drawing together into a severely unimpressed look.

 

Shiro and Allura are hereafter banned from the kitchen.

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and they meant to kill their nightmares by playing another round of anti-gravity tag, but a wrong move has Shiro spiraling and panicking, unsure of where he is and unable to find his footing. Allura reactivates the gravity. She tries to catch Shiro, but he fights her touch and crashes to the ground in a heap. He scrambles away from her, hands coming up to cover his head, hyperventilating.

“No, no, no! Shiro, I’m sorry! I am not going to hurt you! I’m sorry!” Calm. Allura needs to be _calm_. “Shiro, you are safe. You are in the Castle of Lions. You are safe.”

It takes many repetitions before Shiro’s muttering becomes coherent, by which time his forehead is pressed into Allura’s shoulder and his hair is damp with fear sweat.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “These nights are supposed to be fun. I ruined it. I’m sorry.”

“No,” says Allura. “ _No._ ” Her arms come up to hug him tightly. “No, these nights are for letting go. You don’t have to be strong all the time, Shiro.”

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and Allura talks. She talks and she talks and she talks until her voice is hoarse. Until the tears flow and then dry crusty on her cheeks. She talks until she can convince herself that she is not slowly forgetting the details of Altea.

Shiro repeats the name of every festival and holiday and sacred flower until he gets the words exactly right. He grins like the starlight when he makes a connection that proves he’s been paying attention. He gets it, somehow. Why the little things are important. Even if they’re long gone and useless.

After some consideration, Allura realizes she doesn’t have to ask why.

 

Shiro and Allura can’t sleep and for once it’s not on them. The paladins (read: Lance) have insisted on having a post victory party which mostly includes the wildly pink juice they got from on planet and Lance blasting pop music through the Castle’s sound system.

Allura suddenly jumps up. “Oh! I love this song!”

And she proceeds to body roll like the best of them. Lance’s eyes nearly pop out of his head, and Pidge smacks him over the side of the head.

“Um, is that how Alteans normally dance?” says Hunk.

“Oh, no,” says Allura brightly. “Shiro taught me.”

Lance’s head whips around to Shiro. “You dance?!”

While Hunk buries his head his hands and groans (“I thought he was over this”), Shiro shrugs. “Sure.”

And maybe he’s a little high on victory because he offers a hand to Allura. “Want a partner?”

Allura _beams._ She grabs Shiro’s hand and yanks him flush against her. The way they start dancing together frankly makes the tango look tame.

“Well, add that to the list of things Shiro is ridiculously competent at,” says Pidge, rolling her eyes.

Lance, though—Lance is having a _crisis._

He grabs Keith around the neck, voice strangled. “Do you ever think Shiro and Allura are just too hot to handle?”

Keith gags. “Shiro’s like my brother! _No!_ ”

 

Shiro and Allura both can’t sleep, and Allura wants to play dress up. She drags out an absolutely wild collection of dresses and accessories, her eyes shining, and begs Shiro to try them on with her.

And Shiro…well. But Allura assures him he doesn’t have to take off anything beyond the vest and belt, and she wants him to play so _badly_. It’s uncomfortable at first, his shoulders awkward and far too broad for the dainty dresses even with Altean textile engineering. He looks ridiculous. Especially compared to Allura who can pull off even in the most ludicrous of designs with grace. And yet Allura is so delighted. She throws ever increasingly absurd outfits at him, combines them with bizarre headdresses, and laughs at the way a particularly ill-fitting dress showcases his pecs.

And…and it _helps_. Pretending his muscles are just something funny, a minor inconvenience in already ridiculous clothing. Like his body is something that can be laughed at and played with instead of the weapon he knows he is. He wants to tell Allura to stop, to remind her that he is dangerous, but he also wants to keep her laughing. So he lets her tug him into what, as far as he can tell, is just a very elaborate feather boa, and when he looks in the mirror, he actually sees something beyond the arm and the scar and the flop of white hair.

And if he catches Allura’s eyes tracing the line of his body when he’s changing to the next…

Well, surely that’s just wishful thinking.

 

Shiro and Allura could probably sleep. At this point it’s just habit to seek each other out. For comfort, for distraction, for a chance to just let go for a little while and not be the Black Paladin and the Princess of Altea. Instead they’re just… Shiro and Allura. Whoever that is.

 

Shiro and Allura keep finding each other, sharing jokes, stories, struggles in the night. Leaning on each other. Growing closer. Until…

 

…illegally back in the kitchen as Allura yells at the space toaster. “I am the Princess of Altea! Do as I say!”

 

…in Allura’s room, wearing several pounds of Altean jewelry, Shiro bends over, grinning at the mice. “What do you think? Am I as pretty as the princess?”

 

They look at each other and realize—

Well, _crap_. I’m in love.

**Author's Note:**

> ...and then they pine for another 30 years because they both can't believe the feeling's mutual. jk. It's a oneshot. You can imagine this ends however you want.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are very much appreciated!! I love hearing what you think <3


End file.
